Glen Vs Brumby Summary

Employment Discrimination: Case Study 13.5

Case study 13.5 presents an issue about a Gender change taking place with an employee Enriquez. The employer is becoming uncomfortable with the gender change that Enriquez just completed. The employer enforces Enriquez to change back to his original gender or they will not renew his contract to work with the company. Enriquez is not able to change back to his birth gender and is terminated by the employer. The employer was favored by the court.

If I was a friend of Enriquez I would suggest a number of things with him. While I do not agree with his decision on changing his gender I would suggest that if he decided to go through with the process of changing his gender to first confront his employer.

There has been a number of court cases and incidents dealing with this topic. An important case dealing with this something similar to this case study took place in 2011. Glen Vs. Brumby. A claim was brought against the Georgia general assembly by a transgender female who was terminated based on her sex change. She believed she was wrongfully terminated and discriminated against. The court concluded that the employer discriminated against the transgender female and awarded the plaintiff. The court explained, “ a person is considered transgender precisely because of the perception that his or her behavior transgresses gender stereotypes.”(Eoc,2011). The employer asserted that they made the decision to fire the employee based on potential lawsuits that may arise if the transgender women used the women’s restroom. Because of lack of evidence the case was won by the transgender women because the office she worked in only had unisex

Case Questions:

1: “Why couldn’t this case have been covered by title VII on the basis of gender?” The Case could not be covered by title VII on the basis of gender because the document does not contain language regarding discrimination to one 's affectional or sexual orientation. However, the federal court concludes that discrimination on the basis of sex outlaws discrimination against women because they are women and men since they are men. Due to LAD, this situation is gender discrimination.

2: If Enriquez’s employment with Health Systems were not terminated, would she still have a claim for discrimination? Would the conduct of her co-workers and managers have been sufficient to prevail on a discrimination suit? Why or why not? If Enriquez employment with Health Systems were not terminated I believe she would not have claimed for discrimination. The case tells us that Enriquez was willing to change back to her birth gender in order to keep her job. That tells me that she was more worried about her employment than her gender. The conduct of her co-workers and managers would be sufficient enough for a discrimination suit. The case never mentions Enriquez sex change being a workplace disturbance. Also, the employer forced her to change her gender or they would fire her. This gave Enriquez proof that her rights were being